


Variations on a wolf-girl and her bastard knight

by belasteals



Series: Songs for Lost Lives [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Identity Issues, POV Arya, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7035751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belasteals/pseuds/belasteals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she was Arya Stark- they’d called her Arry, but she was still Arya Stark- she had believed she was going home. She had believed in things like love, and trust, and hope. She had believed that her brother was going to win a war, and that she was going back to Winterfell with her mother and three brothers.<br/>Her brother lost the war, and she’d lost love and trust and hope when the knife pierced his heart. She has two brothers and no mother, and Winterfell is not a home to the girl who is once again Arya Stark.<br/>(Or, Arya is not the girl that Gendry remembers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variations on a wolf-girl and her bastard knight

**Author's Note:**

> This is, roughly, the events of "Requiem" from Arya's point of view. I suggest you read that one first, since it fills in some of the missing dialogue.

She never, not once, thought he would come back for her, but he’s kneeling in front of her brother, and the girl who was Arya Stark thinks she might suffocate.

He’s older and larger. She is, too. He’s probably the same person he was. She’s not.

When she was Arya Stark- they’d called her Arry, but she was still Arya Stark- she had believed she was going home. She had believed in things like love, and trust, and hope. She had believed that her brother was going to win a war, and that she was going back to Winterfell with her mother and three brothers.

Her brother lost the war, and she’d lost love and trust and hope when the knife pierced his heart. She has two brothers and no mother, and Winterfell is not a home to the girl who is once again Arya Stark.

The loss of Winterfell, somehow, stings the worst- worse than two parents, a brother, and a childhood. People change, grow old, and die. Castles never change. But Winterfell changed, and Arya changed, and even though she is in the same body, walking the same halls, she is acutely aware that she will never in her life be home.

Instead, she stays hidden in the shadows, where lords and knights can more easily ignore the presence of the girl they wish had never returned. She frightens them, even the Umbers who are all bluster and bravado, even Meera Reed who has seen the dead and lived to tell the tale. She frightens Rickon, who will never speak of Skagos and is too young for the crown on his head. She frightens Sansa, who is steel and ice where she used to be curtsies and lace, the Northern queen whom the North will not crown.

She doesn’t frighten Bran, which is worse than if she did, because Bran reminds her that she is not the wolf everyone says she is. It would be easier if she was.

The boy she lost is speaking, and Arya makes herself breathe. He can’t see her, not here in the shadows behind Rickon and Shaggydog. That much is a blessing, because the Arya Stark she used to be- the one who believed- is threatening to come to life beneath her breastbone, and the Arya Stark she is now must put that ghost to rest.

She pulls herself together just fast enough to answer Sansa’s question for him, because she doesn’t want to hear his answer, not now.

“He knew me, dear sister.”

She steps out of the shadows. Sansa and Rickon knew she was there, but Arya doubts anyone else in the hall did- especially not the boy she has not seen in six years.

Not a boy. A man of twenty, living and breathing not ten paces in front of her when she had assumed after all these years that he was dead. She can see him better in this light. He looks older, but his bright eyes and dark hair are the same. Arya is suddenly furious. He has no right to be the _same_ , not when she is so different, and she hates him.

Her voice doesn’t betray her, because it never does. “He was my companion in the Riverlands, before the Red Wedding and Sandor Clegane. I will vouch for his loyalty and strength as warrior and smith.” It’s true. They have no room to turn away good men, even men who endanger the Arya Stark she has constructed so carefully.

More formalities. More words Arya doesn’t care to listen to. She steps back into the shadows and builds her walls higher.

* * *

She shouldn’t invite him to her solar, but she does. Arya tells herself that she’s going to curse him for leaving her ( _you left him_ ) and tell him to stay in his forge ( _you should have stayed_ ). Then he makes some thrice-damned joke about ‘Your Highness’ and ‘m’lady,’ and she knows that won’t happen.

She smiles. She hasn’t done that in a long time.

Arya thinks she replies, but in truth she isn’t sure, because the next thing she knows, she’s in his arms, and he’s warm and smells like leather and dust and soot and all the things she thought she had left behind.

He smells like _Gendry_.

“I figured you were dead,” she whispers into his tunic.

“I’m too stubborn to die.”

She laughs. She hasn’t done that in a long time either.

They sit, in chairs that go unused because nobody comes to sit with the wolf-girl of Winterfell.

“I looked for you, after the Hound took you. I looked for days, until Thoros dragged me back. Then the Red Wedding happened, and people said you were there-” guilt flashes through her as his voice breaks, and the Arya Stark she once was threatens to break free.

“I was outside the gates when it happened. We were too late.” _Too late to die with them, like I should have_. She believes that.

“Later they said you married the Bastard of Bolton. I told them no, Arya would run him through before he could touch her. I had to believe that it wasn’t you.”

“I was in Braavos. I thought there was nothing left for me here.” _You left me. I left you._

“You’re home now.” It’s those words more than any others that break her. The Arya Stark she was is clawing at the walls she’s built so carefully, and the Arya Stark she _is_ needs to put her down.

“I’m not the same person I was, Gendry,” she says, because he needs to know that, he needs to know that she has _changed_.

“None of us are.”

“No.” _You don’t understand, you will never understand, I_ need _you to understand_. “Gendry, I…” Her words never betray her, because she has trained them not to, but she has to start over. “I’ve done terrible things. Seen terrible things. I’m not the person you remember.”

He takes her hand. She files that away to think about later. “We were children. We’re not, anymore. War changes people, Your Highness-”

She won’t take it. Not from him. Names are important, names are all she has, he will use her _name_ , and that split second is enough to let the Arya Stark she used to be break free.

“Call me Arya, damn you,” that Arya says. “It’s always Your Highness this, Your Highness that, how can we serve the princess, we have to protect the princess, as if I don’t have more blood on my hands than half the men in this castle.”

“Arya.” _Arya Stark. I am Arya Stark. Which Arya Stark?_ “Arya.”

She is at war with herself. How do you win a battle when you are both armies? She’s built a new Arya Stark from blood and pain, a face she presents to the world as the wolf-girl. She makes men fear her because their pity makes her blood boil, but their fear she can handle. It would be easy, so easy, if she were the wolf-girl, but she’s _not_ , she’s a monster of an entirely different kind.

The monsters in the stories are slain by knights, and Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill is killing her.

She welcomes it. She deserves it.

She anchors herself to that thought and silences the other Arya Stark. She makes small talk, discussing war and the future. A future she is sure she will never reach.

* * *

She lets Gendry stay as a sort of punishment for herself. It’s not because he can make her smile. It’s not because he makes her feel human, as if he’s killing the monster _inside_ of her and not the monster she _is_. It’s not because sometimes, just sometimes, she feels whole again when she’s around him. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not.

* * *

He betrayed her.

He knew her mother was in the Riverlands. He’d spoken to her. He’d served her. He _knew_ , and he didn’t tell Arya, and that was a betrayal. She tells him that, spitting venom from her mouth and watching him flinch as her words hit him. It can’t be hurting him as much as it hurts her.

Brienne of Tarth knew, and said nothing. Bran knew, and said nothing. Three betrayals, and somehow Gendry’s stings worse than even her own brother’s. Arya bears three more scars on her soul as she rides south alone.

But the thing in the Riverlands is not her mother. It looks like her mother, through the mud and blood and the slice across its throat. It speaks like her mother, more or less, when it croaks Arya’s name out through the hole in its neck. It is not her mother, because Catelyn Stark had bright eyes that dance when she smiles, and the thing in the Riverlands has eyes that are flat and dead.

Arya puts her sword through its heart, and feels it in her own, tearing her wide open and letting the monster inside into the world. The thing in the Riverlands doesn’t bleed, but Arya bleeds for both of them.

Arya Stark bore three new scars on her soul as she rode south, and four when she rides north.

She doesn’t speak, even when she returns to the place that used to be her home, because the thing in the Riverlands has merged with the monster in her skin and if she opens her mouth, she cannot stop them both from coming out. It’s like the first time she came back to Winterfell, before she could be Arya Stark again and trust the words in her mouth. She was No One when she came back then, and she is nothing when she comes back now.

He doesn’t understand that, because he has never worn another face and been another person. He is Gendry, always, warm and solid and strong, and _he betrayed her_. He’s standing in her doorway, and she isn’t sure he hears when she tells him to fuck himself.

“Arya. We have to talk about it.”

She wants to scream, to make him understand that she _can’t_ talk about it, because the old Arya and the new Arya and the thing in the Riverlands and the monster in her skin are all mixed up and she can’t tell which is which.

“I’m not leaving. We’re done leaving each other, the pair of us.”

She so desperately wants to hate him for betraying her, for leaving her, for being whole and human and _good_ when she is none of those things. She doesn’t hate him at all, not when he speaks to the Arya Stark she used to be in a way nobody else can, and that Arya flings her body into his arms and sobs into his chest.

“I wanted her to come home. I thought I could make it better.”

“I know.”

“She wasn’t my mother. Not really. My mother died at the Twins.”

He whispers something soothing into her hair that she doesn’t quite catch, so instead she lets the feeling of him envelop her.

“I had to kill her.”

He says her name- “Arya-” and the pain in his voice and her name on his tongue are enough for her to regain control. She is weak around him, and she cannot be weak, not ever. Not when there is fighting in the south and Others in the north- but the feeling of him is curled up in the hole where her heart should be, and even as she pushes him away and thinks of war, she can feel him warming her from the inside out.

She asks him stay. She allows herself that moment of weakness. Arya Stark promises herself there will not be another.

Even as she thinks it, she knows she’s lying.

* * *

Gendry is in love with her. Arya knows it as well as she knows Needle, as well as she should know her own name. She can see it in his eyes, as he watches her when he thinks she isn’t paying attention. She can hear it in his voice, in the way the word _Arya_ sits on his tongue. She could probably feel it under his skin, if she let herself, but they are so careful not to touch each other besides those rare occasions that she lets him hold her.

She does let herself once, after the first battle when she is alone and afraid and desperate to feel anything except the dread suffocating her soul. The air is warm from bodies they’ve burned, and her blood runs hot as she kisses him messily, letting the feel of him engulf her until her mind stops screaming.

Arya is not in love with him. She can’t be, not yet, because they are at war, and because she is not yet whole enough to give a piece of herself to him. She does love the way he makes her feel human, as if the Arya Stark she was and the Arya Stark she is could be the same person.

She thinks he understands that, but it doesn’t make the guilt burn any less white-hot when they pull away from each other, gasping for air. She hates herself for using him, for taking his love so easily when she has none of her own to return.

It’s too much. She leaves, and even though she knows they should talk about it, the words stick in her throat and somehow, they never have the time.

* * *

Arya knew she wasn’t going to live through this war. She thinks she’s known all her life. She has lived on borrowed time, and death comes for her on the battlefield.

But because the gods are cruel, she watches him die first.

Gendry, who was kind and good and full of life, bleeds out in front of her eyes, and the Arya Stark she was bleeds with him. The thing in the Riverlands and the monster in her skin are gone, and Arya is perfectly, terribly alone.

For the first time in her life, she stops fighting.


End file.
